Eagle Guardian: The War of 2010

Almost bare, almost.
They will dream up a suitable 'cunning plan'.





Oh you only do that when all else fails and NATO’s tanks are entering Moscow.



This is the prize winner for Top Post of the Year!
See lordroel for your reward.

One Hundred and Seventy–Six

‘Moscow needed to strike back’ was certainly true. A plan to do so was already in the making but one now given urgent attention from the Kremlin. The Security Council of Russia gave their approval to begin something that would bring with it many worrying risks though at the same time promises of great reward too. It was called Operation Volk (Wolf).

The Russian army would do in early September what it had done back in early August: launch a massive surprise attack. Coming out of cover, two field armies, with troops brought in from far away, would strike forwards and aim to get behind NATO forces to either crush them or cause them to surrender. It had worked before – well… depending on your opinion there – and was intended to work again. It would be a war-winning move which would bring the war to a successful close. Moscow would then afterwards approach the West aiming to get them to talk terms.

Where was Russia to launch its surprise attack? In Belarus and Poland.

Where would it be launched from? The Ukraine.


Volk called for the Thirty-Fifth Army (Far East based troops who had left there as Sakhalin fell) and the Forty-Ninth Army (from the North Caucasus; men not involved in fighting the Georgians and the Americans) to travel through the neutral Ukraine, go around the Pripet Marshes and then enter Belarus from out of northwestern Ukraine. One field army would advance northwards to retake occupied Belorussian soil; the other would move northwest, passing through southwestern Belarus, and into Poland. Kovel in the Ukraine would be the staging post with Brest the first objective in Belarus. Earlier ideas to launch the attack into Poland direct from the Ukraine had been scuppered by Kiev but the second strike was planned to quickly reach Polish soil after crossing only a small portion of Belarus.

NATO and the US V Corps fighting in Belarus would be hit from the flank and surrounded from behind. Where the German-Dutch I Corps remained on Polish soil behind them, they would be crushed by the attack moving against them. Russian troops would feint for another drive towards Warsaw once more but instead focus their Polish operation on going through the Podlachia region. Moreover, to support the twin strikes in the rear, NATO forces at the frontlines were to be met with an early distraction where Russian Airborne Troops taken from the last of the central reserve would join in the fighting around places such as Baronovichi and Kobryń first. Each of those were currently being held. Russian thinking was that once NATO saw Russia committing what they believed where its last reserves, elite troops too, that would be the most that could be done. They would take their eyes off elsewhere.

Volk was a good plan… on paper anyway. There were many difficulties in getting it underway though. The Kremlin was told that it could begin on September 8th (they made the decision on the 4th) and this meant getting an extraordinarily large number of component pieces into place first. Those two Russian armies had recently arrived in Western Russia: now they had to be sent though the Ukraine and towards Kovel. When they moved, they had to do so with speed yet also as little fuss as possible. Success depended upon them not being spotted with it being made clear by the generals to the politicians that if they were, the border crossing would be opposed and Russia’s last gasp attack defeated.

Going through the Ukraine quietly was done for another reason too. In Kiev, President Yanukovych had been bullied into allowing for this to happen but he wanted to afterwards claim that his country hadn’t known. That was how he intended to sell things whether the Russians met success or failure: we didn’t know. Such was the reason why Poland wasn’t going to be invaded direct out of the Ukraine. If that had occurred, Yanukovych had stated that his country would be forced into the war. Russian troops arriving into Belarus after supposedly illegally crossing Ukrainian territory was something that he believed he could claim with a straight face: NATO would be furious but not as much as if they went direct into Poland. Ukrainian forces wouldn’t provide any assistance to the crossing of the Russian forces through their territory either, not openly anyway. This would mean that the Russians would have to do everything themselves too.

In Moscow and Kiev, it was assumed that they could do this without NATO realising what had happened until their troops in Belarus came under attack… maybe even believing that the Thirty-Fifth & Forty-Ninth Armies had gone through the Pripet Marshes and stayed in Belorussian territory all along. Maybe.

In recent weeks, with the Ukraine ‘behaving’ in NATO eyes, there had been a reduction in the surveillance undertaken of the country by them. There hadn’t been any overflights of reconnaissance drones and the Americans had their satellites looking elsewhere too. There were still NATO troops from several different nations in the bordering countries but they no longer had much air cover directly assigned to them after the war in Transnistria had finished. Yanukovych didn’t want a war with NATO, hence his restrictions on what Putin had wanted done at first, but he no longer believed that the West could launch a war against him, not with everything else going on. Moreover, in Kiev, like in Moscow, there was the confidence that Volk would succeed.


The DGSE – France’s foreign intelligence service – had their spy still active in Moscow. The Ukrainian military attaché to Russia remained based at the embassy in the city which had been repeatedly bombed by American stealth bombers. The general had witnessed those strikes and their aftereffects. He had many times worried that the same would happen to Kiev too at some point if his nation did something stupid. Such was the reason why he was spying for the French.

He wasn’t spying on his own country though: he had told the DGSE when he first agreed to work for them that he would do no harm to the Ukraine. Nods and assurances had come from his handlers to this. That was an agreement which they had no intention of honouring in the long-term. It would be a foolish thing to keep to. The intention was for the general to eventually do that either by being talked into it or made to understand that if he didn’t do as asked, he risked exposure. The DGSE was full of professionals and would do that the right way so as to not get him to call their bluff. Anything like that was in the future though. The general hadn’t been working for the French for very long. Only after Yanukovych had been put into place through Russian overt interference in the recent presidential election had be approached the DGSE with his conditions attached. From him had come one of the last-minute warnings sent to NATO of impending war and during the conflict he had given France much intelligence. There was information which flowed through his hands that NATO was eager to be informed of. They asked for more things though, information which he couldn’t get his hands on.

The embassy was being watched by the Russian FSB. The general was being monitored too. He was no fool and his handlers had provided him with some help to avoid detection but it was a dangerous game he was playing. Contact with the DGSE was made through cut-outs, all of whom were Russian nationals before then passed to a French spy operating under deep cover in Moscow. Passing information one way and messages back the other way was no easy process and time-consuming due to the worry that the FSB would catch on.

If they found one link in the chain, then the general was pretty sure he’d be ‘disappeared’.

The Ukrainian Embassy wasn’t involved in the planning for Volk. Neither the ambassador nor the military attaché were party to the concept let alone any of the political factors when it came to Yanukovych doing all that he could to keep the Ukraine neutral while allowing for that new Russian attack on NATO. Moscow and Kiev arranged that at a president-to-president level and also between military commanders-in-chief. However, there was some supposedly unrelated information which came through the embassy. There were bits and pieces concerning transportation access, the meeting of military officers to act as liaisons and such like. The general saw much of this. Naturally, he took an interest in what was going on. He had all the information in front of him that something like Volk was going to happen (the exact details not there though) should he be able to put it together. He just had to see it. If he did so, and that was a big if, then he would face a difficult personal decision.

Tell the DGSE and see what that brought for his country, or do as Yanukovych was going to do and pretend ignorance while again seeing what they would bring for his beloved Ukraine. Which one would he do? Would he understand what was going on before then? If he did, could he get the word out in time?

What happens next, whoever wins, will be an epic fight on the scale of Kursk. Excellent work!

That isn't where this is headed?